Cat Mom
by Sunshine-M
Summary: Daryl brings back a gift from a run to his favorite lady.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

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Daryl and Aaron were searching the last house of the lot, having gathered many things Alexandria would need, when he heard a pitiful sound. He went in the kitchen where he had heard the sound and was met by both the saddest sight ever, and the cutest. There was a dead cat, surrounded by dead kittens, looking like a walker had caught the pussy while giving birth. Under the body of the mother was a kitten, alive this one, with his little eyes still closed.

"It's going to die," Aaron said, when he caught up to him. "That's so sad."

Daryl thought about all the pets he had tried to save lately, thought of Button, and decided that he had to keep trying. He knew someone who believed they didn't get to save anybody anymore. He would prove her wrong.

Carefully, he pushed the dead body of the mom and gathered the shaking kitten, who was meowing pitifully, and put it against his chest beneath his vest and his t-shirt.

"Every time I think I've got you down, you do something weird," Aaron said with a smile.

"Good to know I'm not totally predictable."

Aaron didn't answer but Daryl could tell the guy exactly who the kitten was for.

When they arrived back at Alexandria, Daryl was on his last nerve. The kitten seemed to believe he was his wet nurse, and though the baby had no teeth, he had been trying to draw milk from Daryl's nipple for a while now, and it fucking hurt. However, being on the bike, Daryl hadn't been able to stop and put the kitten someplace else. He wasn't even sure there was a better place. The puss had been held in place.

He jumped off the bike the moment he could, and gave a look to Aaron who took charge of unloading their goods. Daryl ran for their house, hoping to catch her before she had to go work or do some council thing or whatever. She was in the kitchen and she smiled when she saw him.

"Good hunt?" She asked him.

He didn't say anything, only pulled his hand in his vest, and she raised an eyebrow. Her expression change to one of delight when she saw the kitty in his big paw.

He could see that she wanted to coo but being who she was, the first thing she did was assess the situation, and started talking, saying the kit couldn't be more than a couple of days old, and that they would need to feed him. She ordered him to get milk and a clean cloth. He didn't mind her bossing him around, it felt different, almost like it was meant to be.

She went into the living room and people came to look at what she was doing. He saw the look in Father Gabriel's eyes, as he was about to say the kit was doomed, and he glared at him until the words got stuck in the priest's throat. He did the same to everybody else who looked like they would not be supportive. Carol sat down, and wet the cloth with milk, before offering it to the starving kitten who lashed onto it, purring extremely loud for such a small creature. Carol made a low noise in her throat, which seemed to make the kitty cat even happier.

Daryl came to sit next to her, and helped her put more milk on the cloth, as the puss kept drinking. They stopped a few minutes in in order for the kitten to not eat too much at once and end up throwing up, as she explained.

"Thank you," She told him, as she caressed the kitten.

Daryl was pretty sure the kitten was thinking the same thing but toward his new mom.

"I'll call it Tabs. It has a tabby coat. I can't tell right now if it's a boy or a girl."

Daryl would have bet it was a male, for having fallen so hard and so fast for Carol. The kit had good taste.

They kept on feeding it, a little at a time, and he realized that Carol had lots of knowledge about cats, and animals in general. She admitted she had wanted to be a vet in a previous life. She had taken care of very young kittens before, and was certain she could take care of this one. When it fell asleep, she grabbed a scarf and tied it around her back, so that the kitten could use it as a hammock and be still close to her.

Daryl certainly was not jealous, no Sir.

Later, when they got in bed, with Tabs cuddled into Carol's stomach, she watched him undress and spotted the redness on his nipple.

"Tabs seemed to believe I was his Momma," Daryl explained blushing.

Her laughter was music to his ear, and the kiss she gave him was not too shabby either.


	2. Chapter 2

Tabs became a permanent fixture very quick. Everywhere Carol went, she was carrying the kitten in her kangaroo style scarf. Once, Deanna got people to go fetch Carol for her, and they had to wait 25 minutes until Tabs' feeding time was done and Carol was satisfied with the way his digestion was progressing.

Tabs was a boy, of course, as Daryl had predicted, and he was madly in love with his new mom.

It made Daryl happy in ways he sometimes didn't comprehend. When they were feeding the fluffy creature, he would sit closer to Carol, so that their thighs where touching. He would never say it out loud, but there had been that one time when Carol had needed to go check something and had left him with Tabs and the milk, and he had been so proud to be able to provide for the kitten. When Carol had come back, she had smiled, and he would have blushed but he was too busy making sure the kit was still drinking.

It took over 12 days for the kitty cat to finally open his eyes, and Daryl had been waiting for this impatiently. As a boy, he had never had pets. His father had kept a deadly dog once for dog fights, but that had been it. Tabs was fluffy and full of love, and made you feel special, the way Carol made you feel special Daryl would sometimes think. She would trust him with mundane things and he'd feel like the most trustworthy person on Earth. With Tabs, there was the same vibe. The pussy was too small and had to trust you. Difference was Carol could fend off for herself and chose to make you feel good and special he supposed, but all in all, he was liking this new addition to their family.

Carol and he had been sharing a bedroom for a couple of months now, but with Tabs in their life, it felt like they had made a big come out as a couple. Rick and Aaron would jokingly call him "Father Cat", and make joke about his offspring looking like him, but he didn't mind. He was feeling paternal toward Tabs, there was no point in lying. It was something he was sharing with Carol, a new adventure.

Tabs always slept on her side of the bed, and Daryl had gotten used to making sure he was engulfing the kitten when putting his hands around her stomach. The purrs the pussy made were delightful. Sometimes when she was feeding him, Carol also did some low noises, like purrs, and she had explained it was how a mother cat would have let her know her kitten everything was okay.

When Tabs opened his eyes, or finished opening them (it had been a work in progress over several days, but Carol had said not to rush it, that his body knew better), Daryl had been feeding him, and he had found himself calling for Carol who had jumped on the couch next to him and had cooed at the pussy, telling him it was so nice to finally meet him.

Tabs started walking, and it was hilarious to see Daryl move at the slowest pace ever in the house because he had a crawling kitten following him, and he didn't want to go to fast for him. Abraham had made a comment about half eaten walkers being that speed, but Daryl had flipped him the bird.

They had started leaving alone, and Daryl had been the one having the most trouble being fine with it. The kitten was so small, he didn't want anybody to happen to him. He had made it clear that everybody walking in the house had to be aware at all time of the possibility that there might be a kitten sleeping on the ground, and that there would be hell to pay if they didn't mind him.

Carol thanked Daryl several times, for bringing back the kitten, but he had to say it was working amazingly for him too. He had never felt so close to Carol, sharing the bound of cat-parenthood, and being there for her and their ball of fur.

Funny how the sound of a kitten purring made you forget all about the apocalypse.


	3. Chapter 3

As he grabbed his thing to get dressed, something didn't feel right. Daryl grabbed his vest and looked at the back, before yelling:

"For Fuck's Sake! Carol!"

She was in the living room, playing with Judith and Tabs.

"I'm not deaf, what's wrong?" She asked.

"Your offspring decided to ..."

He was just too angry for words and showed her the wings on his back. One was mangled, and there were clawing marks on the shoulder.

"Ouch," was all she said.

"Ouch?" he repeated.

"Leave it to me, I'll fix it."

"Tabs did this..."

"I know. Which only goes to show that we need to get him more stuff. On your next run, you need to look for a cat tree."

"A cat scratching post?" He asked, baffled by the way she was not responding to his outrage. "Where do I find that?"

"In a pet store of course. And you need to see if you can bring him back some dry food. He'll be off milk soon and we need food for him. Take as many bags of junior and not junior food you can carry."

He loved it when she was bossy, but there was still the problem of his vest.

"What you're saying is that I should go out, risk my neck, and get back with cat toys?"

"Oh yes, cat toys! I hadn't thought of those. Bring some back. Or toys for small dogs if you don't have a choice."

She had successfully calm down his mood, and he wondered if it was something she had learnt with Ed. He hated the idea that he could have made her feel threatened for a minute. Sure, he was unhappy with Tabs, but Carol was safe with him. Even the goddamn kitten was safe. He looked at her and she smiled, her head tilted on the side.

"I know," She said, and there was no doubt, she could read his mind.

"What about my vest?"

"Leave it, I'll fix it."

"And if you can't?"

"Well I won't then."

"It's my favorite vest!"

"It's your only vest."

"It has meaning!"

"Oh please. You just liked and picked it up. Remember how much you used to love your poncho? You got over that too."

"But my vest..." Daryl found himself saying, pitifully.

"I'll do my very best to fix it. I have some tips on how to repair leather, and I know that one of the elders, Martha, will gladly help me if she can. She had a sewing machine. We'll make your vest brand new again."

She was smiling at him, and he would have sworn she could read in the layers of his behavior. As a kid, clothes were spare, mostly hand me downs, and he rarely got to have something he liked. She joked about the poncho, but she knew he loved the vest.

With a sigh, he handed her the vest, glaring daggers at Tabs, though he didn't really mean it.

"I knew kids were a bad idea," he said under his breath.

"Yet you're the one who got us one!" Carol said laughing.

She got up, Tabs on her shoulder, and kissed him briefly.

"Be back soon, I'll find some rope in the mean time for the tyke to do his clawing."

"He's lucky he's got this hot mama, or he would be a shish kebab already," Daryl grunted.

"Liar!" She laughed, before rushing him out of the house, where Aaron was waiting.

"Is there a pet store somewhere?"

"Does your offspring need something?"

"Shut up," Daryl said.

He would get hell for sure when he would share the list of items Carol had ordered to get for their son. Little rascal the cat was. Daryl fought the urge to smile when he realized how proud it made him feel to have someone to be all "proud papa" over.

Getting that cat had been his brightest idea.


	4. Chapter 4

Once, Carol went on a run with Aaron, instead of Daryl, as she had been deemed the perfect person for that specific mission, and in turn, the people of Alexandria got treated to the cutest spectacle ever.

Indeed, Tabs was not happy his dearly beloved mommy was gone, and his cat-father, Daryl, was in as foul a mood as the feline.

Tabs had gotten used to sleeping around Carol's neck when she was sitting somewhere, even though he was getting too big for it to be cute and not painful. With Carol gone, he found himself a manlier neck to support him. That was of course, Daryl's neck.

For the two days the run went on, in Alexandria, the hunter and the cat couldn't be spotted without the other, and if anybody but their family dared approach them to tell them everything would be okay for their beloved, they hissed. In unison. In a feral way too.

The first night, Michonne walked by Carol and Daryl's bedroom as he was getting to bed. Tabs was meowing pitifully, seemingly asking when his mother would be back.

"No point giving me that look," Michonne heard Daryl say to the cat. "I'm as lost as you are without her."

There was another meow.

"Stop complaining, "kay? Once I had to go for a very long time never knowing if she would be back because Rick had decided... You don't give a shit. Point is that I had to live without her without knowing if I would see her again. I died. Lost one of my nine lives."

And another meow followed, as Michonne forced herself to keep in the cooing sounds she wanted to make.

"She'll be back. Now sleep."

When she popped her in the bedroom a couple of hours later, she spotted the cat tight against Daryl's stomach, both sleeping in what was usually Carol's spot.

"She can never leave this two again," Michonne thought to herself, fondly.

The next day, both Dixons as Michonne thought of them were on edge, waiting. They were always watching the main door, searching for noises. Tabs was around Daryl's neck, holding on tight, and sometimes he would meow in the archer's ear.

"I know," Daryl would say.

And then, there was noise, and there were doors opening, a truck driving in. It was chaos. When Carol got out of the truck, both her loves were waiting for her, showing appreciation in their own way, Tabs rubbing himself in her legs, Daryl checking for injuries.

"Whoa, they sure did miss her," Aaron told Michonne.

"If you only knew," she answered.

Carol got back in the house, with her man and her cat-son, and all was right again in their little world.


	5. Chapter 5

"You're not cutting my cat's balls!" Daryl exclaimed violently, holding Tabs in his arms, trying to protect the cat's ears with his hands.

The puss was going with the flow. Having reached about 6 months of age, he had gotten used to being handled by some people. If it was someone who was living in one of the two houses he considered as his, they could pet him, and the chicks, much to the men's hilarity, could pick him up and rub his belly.

Carol had to keep herself together so as not to giggle, when she spotted Abraham, Carl and more just outside the door talking amongst themselves about cruelty and shaking their heads, all barely keeping themselves from making sure their own genitalia were in their right place.

"It wouldn't be so much cutting them off," Deanna said. "And we have a vet..."

"I said fuck no!"

Deanna sighed and looked at Carol, who wondered if this was what it felt like to have to have a talk with some girl's parents because your son had been knowing her biblically.

"Deanna, I do appreciate you coming to talk to us about this, in your capacity as a leader, but it seems pretty obvious that what you're offering is not going to happen," Carol said with all the diplomacy she could muster.

The leader had popped up half an hour before, asking to speak to the owners of the cat known as Tabs, and things had gone from weird to weirder by the second.

"Mrs. Capriccio feels very strongly that..."

"Nu-uh. Don't give a shit. He peed on her fur, and she will be damn lucky if I don't join in the next time he tries to pull off something like that," Daryl said.

"I'll clean the fur," Carol said, "and we will keep a better eye on our tyke."

"You must know this is only the beginning and things are going to go downhill from there," Deanna tried to argue. "There's a reason cats get operated, especially male cats."

"I would disagree," Carol said. "What is happening has nothing to do with Tabs' male parts. He's testing the boundaries and we will not let him get away with anything, but for the rest, people used to have their cat neutered to avoid them running away to find a female friend. There is no other cat in a very large radius. Tabs is not going to run away. He might ruin a few more carpets, but with the whole of us looking after him, he will soon be well behaved."

"I do not see what the big deal here is," Deanna said.

"Sure, 'cause you ain't got no balls," Daryl growled, and Carol put a hand on his arm.

"What if Tabs was the last male cat in the US?"

"What?" Deanna asked.

"What if Tabs is the only male cat in a very large radius? What if there is a female cat somewhere waiting for a male to help her bring on more kittens? If we have him neutered, we could be screwing nature out of cats, forever."

"That's reaching..."

"Maybe, but what if? We would like to thank you once again for bringing this issue up to us, we will deal with the damages done to Mrs. Capriccio's properties, but in the mean time we would like to firmly and strongly decline your offer to have our son uh cat, neutered," Carol said. "Rest assured that we will make everything in our power to make it so he doesn't cause someone else a problem."

"Everything but getting him neutered," Deanna muttered, rolling her eyes.

"Damn right." Daryl exclaimed, his arms still full with the kitten who was becoming a cat a little more each day.

Sure, Tabs had some bad habits, and the couch would never recover from what the cat had done scratching around on it, but they would not have him neutered. Carol hoped that one day she would get to be a cat grandmother.

She walked Deanna back to the door, even though the official wanted to stay some more, and only breathed when the leader was gone.

She went back into the living room, where everyone was slowly pouring back.

"Who would have thought a small cat would warrant a visit from the grand Deanna?" Michonne joked.

Daryl finally let go of the puss who went to be his charming self with the ladies.

"She's not taking my cat's balls. No Ma'am," the hunter repeated with a glint of protectiveness in his eyes as he watched his feline son.

The male part of the crowd nodded along and Carol finally let the giggles she was holding in escape.


End file.
